Review of Harsh Times (2005) by Ec — 09 Nov 2006

This movie is not only bad, it's (dare I say it) Gigli bad. The premise of the film seems decent with a Gulf War veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome trying to make it again in the real world.

However, the movie gets really busy really fast with Jim's (the soldier) friend Mike also trying to find a job. Mike happens to be the lucky husband of Sophie (played by Eva Longoria) who is a lawyer.

How a dead-beat drug user ended up with her is still unknown to me as it is never really developed. That also seems to be the case with the rest of the film. They never really develop what Jim went through.

They never followed through with the job Jim gets in the film, they never expand on Jim's mysterious relationship with a Mexican woman who he wants to marry and bring into America. They never expand on any of the characters relationships with each other.

The film overall tries to have too many plots (romance, struggle in the real world, effects of war) and just simply tried to hard to accommodate them all and failed miserably. On top of that, the dialog is stereotypical of "gangsta" speach and unremarkable at best.

The cinematography is absolutely disgusting (the worst part being a slow-motion shooting scene where Jim gets shot). The soundtrack is cheesy and cliched, the direction seems like it was done in the same state the characters are almost the entire movie: drunk and high on marijuana.

Which is another point, why are the main characters always driving around drunk and high on marijuana? Another mystery to me is whether I should feel sympathy toward Jim because of what he went through or not.

I found it really hard to have sympathy when he's drunk and high and talking smack and sticking guns at people including his girlfriend. In the end, I was left wondering what this movie was really about.

I can't figure out for the life of me what the message this movie was trying to send was. Whatever the message was, it was extremely weak and not very well supported by the cast. There wasn't nearly enough scenes with Eva Longoria to keep me interested either.

Currently, I am considering the legal possibility of suing all those responsible for the 2 hours of my life they wasted. I would say, avoid this movie. No coherency, no intelligence, "nada" (en espanol).